Can Quebec’s Church-based curse words survive in a secular age?

The social changes resulting from the desertion of Quebec church pews have been widely documented: smaller families, fewer marriages, a reformed education system, to name a few. The fate of religious buildings rendered obsolete has generated considerable angst.

But what, en criss, is going to happen to the province’s preferred swear words?

When francophone Quebecers whack a thumb with a hammer or get cut off in traffic, the curses that spew forth are overwhelmingly drawn from objects found in the Catholic Church: ostie, tabarnak, ciboire, câlice, criss! But a new book by a Montreal theology professor and an exhibition at a religion museum raise the question, how long can the distinctively Québécois swear words survive in a secular age?

At the Musée des religions du monde (Museum of World Religions) in Nicolet, about 110 kilometres northeast of Montreal, Jean-Francois-Royal is regularly struck by the widening gulf between Quebecers and their Catholic heritage. “We are at the point where we have a generation of students who ask, ‘Who is the guy on the cross?’ ” Mr. Royal, the museum’s director, said.

It was that sort of ignorance that inspired the museum’s current exhibition, Tabarnak! A Look at Swearing in Quebec. Mr. Royal said he had noticed that schoolchildren visiting the museum cracked up when the guide came to the section displaying items from inside the Catholic Church. “When they were told, ‘This is a calice, this is a ciboire,’ they would break out in laughter and say, ‘Ha, this guy is swearing,’ ” he recalled. The initial goal of the exhibition, which runs until next September, was “to show children what were the objects invoked by swear words.”

The evolution of swearing in Quebec, in particular in the 20th century, can be interpreted as an early form of rebellion against a powerful clergy. “One theory is that religion held such a stranglehold over people, that swearing was a colourful way for them to free themselves from religion,” Mr. Royal said. He noted that the first use of ostie (from hostie, or Host) as a curse was documented in the early 20th century following a decree that communion should be celebrated weekly rather than once a year. Communion wafers became a greater presence in people’s lives and a source of annoyance for those who resented weekly attendance.

Olivier Bauer, a professor in Université de Montréal’s faculty of theology and religions, is a native of Switzerland who moved to Quebec six years ago. He quickly became intrigued by the prominent place of the hostie in Quebec and has just published a book titled L’hostie, une passion québécoise.

After hearing faculty colleagues use the word to swear and seeing communion wafers sold in supermarkets and consumed as snacks, he came to the conclusion that hostie now belongs as much to the secular as to the spiritual world. “It remains something very important to the Catholic Church, but it has become part of the Quebec culture,” he said. “It is no longer the property of the Church, but it is more part of Quebec’s cultural heritage, in my opinion.”

The book details the evolving role of the Host in Quebec, from the first celebration of a Catholic Mass in New France in 1535 through its emergence as the “king of swear words” in the 20th century. Among his resource material is a lengthy 1982 report on swearing for the Office québécois de la langue française, Quebec’s language watchdog. It found that ostie was the preferred swear word of young women (their elders preferred câlice) and all ages of men. The study also noted that 20 years after the beginning of the Quiet Revolution, 94% of teenagers still considered it a swear word. The future of ostie as a go-to curse seemed assured.

But today, Mr. Bauer is not so certain. Though he concludes the book with an imagined ceremony designating hostie part of Quebec’s official heritage, he acknowledges the word’s impact is gradually weakening. “It has been used so much that it has lost a bit of its shock effect,” he said. “Yes, I think it could disappear [as a swear word]. I think young people are using more English swear words.”

Mr. Royal said the only sure thing is that “there have always been swear words, and there always will be.” His museum’s exhibition highlights some once-common Quebec curses that have disappeared. For example, torrieu, from tord à Dieu (harm to God), is never heard any more.

The catalogue accompanying the exhibition notes that swear words are not eliminated by censorship but by the erosion of their ability to offend. Already, Quebecers have stopped employing tamer derivatives of the curses in favour of the full-strength original.

“A process of elimination has already begun,” the catalogue says. “For example, esprit [spirit], sacrament and baptême [baptism] are rarely spoken by young people. It seems that only ostie, calvaire [Calvary], criss [from Christ], câlice [chalice] and tabarnak [tabernacle] endure because they are often repeated in the media. But how much longer can they maintain their impact? … Their expressivity weakened, these swear words will become in their turn, like torrieu, archaic and folkloric.”

Mr. Royal illustrates the point with an anecdote from the museum. Pointing to a chalice, a high school student asked, “Sir, when I say câlice, is that what I’m talking about?” Told yes, he replied: “OK, that’s just taken away the strength of the word. I’ll have to find another.”